Bearded Savages of the Day Number 70 – Pakistani religious tolerance edition

April 26, 2013

‘There shall be no compulsion in religion’ says the Islamic Koran but this message is so often observed in the breach rather than the actuality, especially in the Islamic world.

There certainly seems to be an excess of compulsion happening in Pakistan (surprise, surprise) and the Christian news agency BosNewsLife regales us with a particularily horrible tale of Islamic bigotry and oppression.

The legendary intolerance of Islam in Pakistan has forced a Christian family into hiding because the father was overseeing the job of building a church and his daughters have been assaulted for refusing to convert to Islam.

BosNewsLife said:

“A Christian father said Friday, April 26, his family is hiding in the Pakistani city of Lahore after Islamic militants tried to abduct and kill one of his daughters because they refuse to convert to Islam.

Sadiq Masih Zafar told BosNewsLife that the threats come nearly a decade after his family was forced to flee the nearby city of Muridke, where another daughter was nearly strangled to death in 2004 because of their church work.

He said the problems began when the Lahore Church Council appointed him to supervise the construction of a local church building. “Religious extremists tried to pressurize and stop the construction and took over the church land,”he recalled.

“They demolished the construction and brutally assaulted” him, family members and even workers, Zafar said. Soon after, “A mosque was constructed near the church land “and announcements were made that if the church is constructed, they would burn it,” he added.

The “extremists”, he claimed, also pressured him and his family to convert to Islam. He recalled that his daughter Sarwat Naheed was returning home in 2004 from the city of Faisalabad, when she was “abducted by masked men.”

BROKEN LEGS

“They broke her legs, she had a severe head injury as they tried to strangle her,” he said. “She was found unconscious in the fields.”

Several days later his son Azeem Zafar was allegedly stopped on his way home and “assaulted” as well. Zafer said his family fled Muridke and settled in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province. But the “extremists” didn’t stop looking for them, he recalled.

“I still remember that on March 27, 2004 [when] the family was sitting together in Bahar colony of Lahore, masked men forcefully entered our home.”

His family moved away to another location in Lahore, but was recently discovered when daughter Asma Tosheeba joined a local medical school, he said.

“She was threatened and the extremists tried to abduct her.” He complained that his family has been appealing for protection,but police “failed to act”. Police officials could not be reached for comment. “

It’s funny how many of the followers of Islam see no wrong in violently treating Christians like this but if a non Muslim behaved even a fraction as bad as this towards Muslims they would be up in arms.

Sadly many Muslims and their supporters in the ‘diversity industry;’ truly cannot see that the behavour of Islamic communties throught the world is contributing to why many people dislike both the ideology of Islam and the behavour of many of its followers. Would any of the very well renumerated members of Britain’s diversity industry sit by whilst people burned mosques or threatened Muslim individuals? Of course they would not, but far too many Muslims, especially British Muslims of Pakistani heritage do not speak out against the terrible way religious minorities are treated in Pakistan. British Muslims are in no position to whine about their treatment in the UK when their co-religionists from the areas from which they originate from, treat Christians like dirt or worse.

Because British Muslims of Pakistani heritage are not speaking out about this appalling abuse of Christians in Pakistan it is quite easy to come to the conclusion that such British Muslims are either ambivilent about the fate of Pakistani Christians or worse, approve of such treatment.

The position of Christians in Pakistan is very instructive of the reality of how Islamic states treat Christians and other religious minorities and should be a warning to those outside the Muslim community to take with a pinch of salt those positive and fluffy statements about Islams acceptance of different beliefs that we are fed too often by the British media.

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One of the issues that the diversity industry has with Christians in Pakistan is that they are seen as converts from the days of the Raj, hence they do not have the same rights as what is seen as the ‘indigenous’ muslim population. The fact that Christianity spread eastwards as well as westwards is beyond them and was established in India before the days of Portuguese, French or even the colonisation of the British East India company is beyond them. The fact that the Moghul Empire was an invading colonising force is also beyond them too. As they say, it sounds right so it must be right.